The question is what does "related" mean? Some people seem to think undiagnosed COVID, others hospital avoidance etc?
We need data from the ONS, on all causes of death, I think.
That's effectively what we've got, from the 'excess deaths' figures the ONS published this morning. The proportion of 'hidden' extra deaths (i.e. the number of excess deaths where Covid-19 was not explicitly identified as a factor) is around 25% - 3,000 out of 12,000, up to the 17th April:
Covid-19 deaths drove up the total number of deaths in England and Wales to 22,351 for the week to 17 April – 11,854 higher than the five-year average and the highest recorded for 27 years when comparable records began.
The number of so-called “excess deaths” not attributed to Covid-19 was 3,096 in the week ending 17 April up from 1,783 the week before
Obviously that's a bit out of date but it's probably a reasonable indication that there is not some absolutely massive number of Covid-19-related deaths dwarfing the official figures.
The statistic showing only 30% of care home deaths were from Covid in the last week of data must be wrong in my opinion. I wouldn't be surprised if they hadn't just put the numbers in the wrong way round!
30% of care home deaths where Covid-19 has been given as a contributory cause. It may well be that there was insufficient evidence in relation to the other 70%.
Where COVID19 was on the death certificate as (of the) contributory causes of death. Or in the coroners report.
The criteria for being on the death certificate is the clinical judgement of the doctor signing it. A test is not necessary.
So if a doctor thought it was COVID19, it goes down as a COVID19 related.
We're not disagreeing.
It seems unlikely to me that given the above, a vast number of COVID19 deaths are being missed/miss-assigned. That would require doctors spread across the country to be ignoring symptoms in front of them.
Now we are disagreeing. I regard it as far more unlikely that a dramatic and almost unprecedented rise in care home deaths is due to anything other than the spread of a pandemic that is being widely discussed than that either doctors may not have noticed the signs of an infection with a wide range of symptoms or that even mild cases are polishing off our frailest senior citizens.
So you are suggesting that mild cases are killing the elderly? Mild as in barely medically noticeable?
No - it's more likely that if a resident had a fever and died of heart failure, a proportion of doctors will simply put heart failure down as cause of death.
Remember that up until very recently, there was minimal testing for Covid accessible by care homes.
I have mentioned my son in law's father on here a few times and he is now in crisis needing care and only one nursing home in the whole of Conwy CC is available, and it is reported they have had a covid death
The social services and GP practice are carrying out an urgent assessment following multiple falls at home, often more than once a day, and increasing confusion and it is simply unsafe for him to be in his home. I expect that either he will be hospitalised or a care home will have to be found for him, but what a position to be in that he cannot be provided with a safe envirionment, even when his children can and will pay his care home services privately
30% of care home deaths where Covid-19 has been given as a contributory cause. It may well be that there was insufficient evidence in relation to the other 70%.
Where COVID19 was on the death certificate as (of the) contributory causes of death. Or in the coroners report.
The criteria for being on the death certificate is the clinical judgement of the doctor signing it. A test is not necessary.
So if a doctor thought it was COVID19, it goes down as a COVID19 related.
We're not disagreeing.
It seems unlikely to me that given the above, a vast number of COVID19 deaths are being missed/miss-assigned. That would require doctors spread across the country to be ignoring symptoms in front of them.
Now we are disagreeing. I regard it as far more unlikely that a dramatic and almost unprecedented rise in care home deaths is due to anything other than the spread of a pandemic that is being widely discussed than that either doctors may not have noticed the signs of an infection with a wide range of symptoms or that even mild cases are polishing off our frailest senior citizens.
So you are suggesting that mild cases are killing the elderly? Mild as in barely medically noticeable?
No - it's more likely that if a resident had a fever and died of heart failure, a proportion of doctors will simply put heart failure down as cause of death.
Remember that up until very recently, there was minimal testing for Covid accessible by care homes.
I have mentioned my son in law's father on here a few times and he is now in crisis needing care and only one nursing home in the whole of Conwy CC is available, and it is reported they have had a covid death
The social services and GP practice are carrying out an urgent assessment following multiple falls at home, often more than once a day, and increasing confusion and it is simply unsafe for him to be in his home. I expect that either he will be hospitalised or a care home will have to be found for him, but what a position to be in that he cannot be provided with a safe envirionment, even when his children can and will pay his care home services privately
That is very hard, Big_G. Government does seem to have begun to grasp the problem (one for which they are at least to an extent responsible), but that's of little help to you, for now.
Unsurprising figure but I'm surprised as many as 7% went for Gove too - as someone who likes Gove. Shows the unreliability of polling respondents to answer the question actually asked.
Gove and Patel simply haven't done that much that's obvious compared to the others during Boris's absence. Their departments are not as key frontline as the others.
Nation likes person who gives them free stuff shock.
Nation likes person who took the risk to react quickly in what was a constructive manner. Given the usual speed of the Treasury when it comes to handing back money, it was a bloody miracle.
Compare and contrast with everyone else in government.
Note he's never once said "we're following the advice of our economists"...
Because that would be an absurd and meaningless phrase that most especially anyone who knows anything about economics would laugh at.
Why would anyone say anything so silly? There are economists for and against almost any action.
Of course, the same goes for science. As Prof Brian Cox said to Andrew Marr on Sunday:
"There’s no such thing as ‘the science’, which is a key lesson. If you hear a politician say ‘we’re following the science’, then what that means is they don’t really understand what science is. There isn’t such a thing as ‘the science’. Science is a mindset."
I wonder if that applies to campaigners on Global Warming, where 'follow the science' is also a mantra.
Just a musing on that...
Not accepting that increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will lead to the warmng of average global temperatures is not just outsider the "cloud of science" it is a hundred miles away.
Arguing that tiny trace volumes of CO2 are the only controlling factor and what the sun is up to is a disctraction seems thousands of miles away.
Increase in CO2 levels in the atmosphere 285 ppm to 410 ppm since 1850. That's a 44% increase. Saying the words "tiny trace" just makes you sound like an idiot.
"How can a tiny trace amount of botulinum toxin kill someone?"
Globally over decades the world is certainly outputting a lot of CO2.
The global atmospheric difference in CO2 between the UK going to net zero at a timescale like the government are proposing and the UK going at a timescale XR propose is a tiny trace difference.
Brexiteer= Climate change denier. What a surprise. Had enough of experts? Support Brexit and any other idiots charter that is in vogue with the pseudoscience Trumpian populist right wing.
A venn diagram of Trump fans/ Brexiteers/ climate change deniers/ end-lockdown-now advocates would show a great deal of overlap.
I've got no overlap.
Despise Trump and hopes he loses, want climate change tackling sensibly, think the lockdown needs to be ended when the time is right but not yet and Brexiteer. So one of your 4.
I have noted a persistent theme - that all Brexiters must be Trump supporters. Despite polling that indicates virtually no-one in the UK has any time for him.
The theme is that any British Trumptons were very very likely to be Brexiteers. Lots of people pretending they never had any time for him now he has become such an embarrassment but that was not what they were saying at the time he was elected. The UK Trump-rampers that come to mind are all UKIP types - who can forget all those photos of good old Nigel fawning over him. Remind me of any prominent remainers that were Trump fans - I'm sure there must be an odd one but I can't think of any..
There are massive parallels between the reasons Brexit and Trump won,
Really? Trump got mostly the same voters as Bush, McCain and Romney. He lost the popular vote and won only because Clinton was a uniquely unpopular candidate with a terrible campaign staff who set out to prove that the Obama campaign won 'wrong'.
Brexit had a quarter of a century campaign by the highest selling newspapers in the country covering every demographic.
I think the links are pretty tenuous.
I would have thought you would
What's the evidence that Trump voters are a unique coalition of left behind, economically anxious people as opposed to people who have voted Republican at every election for the last 20 years?
It doesn't really matter. When a politician that someone has strong feelings against is succesful, the reason for that success is always a deficiency on the side of their defeated opponent/campaign.
Clinton, Corbyn, Remain...
Nor does it remove the possibility that they, or the values that they espouse, are repulsive and will be judged (hopefully) by history as an aberration from the generally accepted norms of decency that representative democracy normally upholds. Populism is having its day in the sun. Like the coronavirus it will eventually be killed by exposure to the forces of light.
Not really the point. It happens when those you consider repulsive lose too. Very few people are gracious in defeat, or acknowledge they were beaten by the better candidate, they are too self-important. They think it must be something wrong with them, their campaign, or failing that, skullduggery
I think you miss the point. Trump's recent and past antics have proven his inappropriateness for high office. The would-be emperor has no clothes (what a repulsive thought that is!). Because someone wins an election doesn't somehow automatically bring them virtue, and there is absolutely nothing virtuous about populism as it appeals to the base instinct of division. Oh, btw., Corbyn was out of the same stable, just on the left wing and not successful. It doesn't make him less repulsive for his divisive politics. I must give you some small credit though for being an apologist for Trump. That is odd, but it could just be the normal contrariness of the populist.
The statistic showing only 30% of care home deaths were from Covid in the last week of data must be wrong in my opinion. I wouldn't be surprised if they hadn't just put the numbers in the wrong way round!
30% of care home deaths where Covid-19 has been given as a contributory cause. It may well be that there was insufficient evidence in relation to the other 70%.
Where COVID19 was on the death certificate as (of the) contributory causes of death. Or in the coroners report.
The criteria for being on the death certificate is the clinical judgement of the doctor signing it. A test is not necessary.
So if a doctor thought it was COVID19, it goes down as a COVID19 related.
We're not disagreeing.
It seems unlikely to me that given the above, a vast number of COVID19 deaths are being missed/miss-assigned. That would require doctors spread across the country to be ignoring symptoms in front of them.
Now we are disagreeing. I regard it as far more unlikely that a dramatic and almost unprecedented rise in care home deaths is due to anything other than the spread of a pandemic that is being widely discussed than that either doctors may not have noticed the signs of an infection with a wide range of symptoms or that even mild cases are polishing off our frailest senior citizens.
So you are suggesting that mild cases are killing the elderly? Mild as in barely medically noticeable?
I've previously had the (dis)pleasure of trying to use death records (ONS, records from death certificates) to look at cause of death. This was in a population where we also had HES (hospital) records, so we knew what underlying conditions people had been hospitalised for. The cause of death data were pretty poor at recording the underlying cause of death (as opposed to the immediate cause). 30-40% were missing any mention even of underlying conditions that were inevitably going to lead to death. You'd think that recording should get better for coronavirus as it should be on everyone's mind, but I wouldn't bet on it. It may be that those completing the certificates are reluctant to put it on without a confirmed test.
Thanks, Selebian. That confirms what was for me no more than a strong impression.
The head of Germany’s Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases has called on Germans to stay at home as much as possible after new figures showed the coronavirus infection rate had increased.
Now if the UK loosen lockdown, then tells the public this isn't going so well, please go back to staying at home as much as possible.
UUUUUUUUUU------TURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRN
CONFUSION
CHAOS
SHAMBLES
A shambles across Europe, to be fair.
How can France open up as Germany locks down harder?!
Inter alia, this is the death of Schengen for the foreseeable
France had much more stringent rules. Eg. to go out you needed to have a prefilled form, maximum 1 hour, not more than 1KM from home.
Germany is not locking down harder, actually the opposite, but the request today was that we should keep to the rules.
UK media.
March: We must lockdown now!!!! April: When will the lockdown end? May: Why did you loosen the lockdown, thousands are dying?
Mr. Tyson, a geographically distinct approach might well be wise. I do wonder if people would wear it.
I don't think we've got the bureaucracy or knowhow to manage a complex arrangement.....I think dividing the country in this way would also conflict with our inherent sense of fair play and would struggle to get public support as you suggest....
I think it is likely that the rules as we creep out of lock down will be applied evenly, but we may well be forced to re-introduce measures geographically in hotspots which would get some public buy in, and also be easier to coordinate in the future.....
Australia has been described as “gum stuck to the bottom of China’s shoe,” by a Chinese state media editor as Beijing criticised calls for an inquiry into the coronavirus origin as “political manoeuvring,” further straining ties.
Whatever you think of Beijing, that’s a brilliant national insult. Vividly metaphorical yet also geographically sort-of true
Xi Jinping, I salute you
Aussie frigate with the USN ARG in the South China Sea as well which can't be smoothing relations
Comparing countries is fraught - different social aspects, different distribution of population, diferent habits, different demographics, the works. But there are a few countries where direct comparisons can be drawn.
One such was East vs West Germany - a single country split in two and subject to differing economic systems. Comparing East German and West German economic outcomes was valid.
Comparing Sweden with Belgium (or San Marino, or South Korea, or Austria, or Italy, or Ireland) is equally dodgy. But it is easily comparable with its immediate neighbours. Sweden, Denmark, and Norway have long been entangled together with shared histories - similar societies, similar distribution of people, similar languages, similar social habits. Sweden and Norway last separated in 1905.
Denmark has a border with the rest of the European masses, and is very close and entangled with Germany and the Netherlands. It also has a significantly denser population than the other two.
Swedish population is 1.906 times the population of Norway. Scaling up cumulative deaths in Norway (locked down) and Sweden (restrictions but not fully locked down), with Norwegian deaths scaled up by 1.906 times gives a useful comparison of the effects of a lockdown, with as many other confounding effects avoided.
Sweden should, ceteris paribus, be somewhere between Norway and Denmark's curve.
I found this article by Wolfgang Münchau on the economic prospects in the aftermath rather uplifting.
"The EU is mostly concerned with saving existing jobs, propping up existing industries, stopping companies from going bust. This can slow economic rejuvenation at a time when it’s badly needed. There is no real focus on start-ups, or emerging industries such as artificial intelligence." ... and ... "Opting out of GDPR can be Britain’s great escape, a chance to come up with a new data protection regime designed to encourage new companies — and economic repair in general."
Mr. Tyson, a geographically distinct approach might well be wise. I do wonder if people would wear it.
I don't think we've got the bureaucracy or knowhow to manage a complex arrangement.....I think dividing the country in this way would also conflict with our inherent sense of fair play and would struggle to get public support as you suggest....
I think it is likely that the rules as we creep out of lock down will be applied evenly, but we may well be forced to re-introduce measures geographically in hotspots which would get some public buy in, and also be easier to coordinate in the future.....
A geographically distinct approach is more or less what we have in Germany due to the federal system. It is widely discussed, but most people seem to accept it.
Comments
Covid-19 deaths drove up the total number of deaths in England and Wales to 22,351 for the week to 17 April – 11,854 higher than the five-year average and the highest recorded for 27 years when comparable records began.
The number of so-called “excess deaths” not attributed to Covid-19 was 3,096 in the week ending 17 April up from 1,783 the week before
Obviously that's a bit out of date but it's probably a reasonable indication that there is not some absolutely massive number of Covid-19-related deaths dwarfing the official figures.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/28/uk-records-4343-care-home-coronavirus-deaths-in-a-fortnight
NEW THREAD
Government does seem to have begun to grasp the problem (one for which they are at least to an extent responsible), but that's of little help to you, for now.
NEW THREAD
March: We must lockdown now!!!!
April: When will the lockdown end?
May: Why did you loosen the lockdown, thousands are dying?
Repeat.
I think it is likely that the rules as we creep out of lock down will be applied evenly, but we may well be forced to re-introduce measures geographically in hotspots which would get some public buy in, and also be easier to coordinate in the future.....
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6735768/us-praises-aust-warship-in-south-china-sea/?cs=14232